Engineers Thermal Vent: How well does it work? Or is it bugged?

[Daniel Cloudsifter]

I've put three C2 Beam Lasers on my Fer-de-Lance. All three are G5 Efficient. Two have Thermal Vent, one has Regeneration (for healing wing mates).

I'm not noticing any heat level differences in combat vs. when I had G5 Efficient beams without Thermal Vent. Further, when I fire my SCB, my temperature spikes higher if I'm firing the beams than if I'm not and it cools down MUCH slower.

Does Thermal Vent work? If so, by how much? Right now the only thing it has going for it, in my eyes, is the funny heat cloud effect it puts on the target as it strikes.

 

[znôrt]

I've put three C2 Beam Lasers on my Fer-de-Lance. All three are G5 Efficient. Two have Thermal Vent, one has Regeneration (for healing wing mates).

I'm not noticing any heat level differences in combat vs. when I had G5 Efficient beams without Thermal Vent. Further, when I fire my SCB, my temperature spikes higher if I'm firing the beams than if I'm not and it cools down MUCH slower.

Does Thermal Vent work? If so, by how much? Right now the only thing it has going for it, in my eyes, is the funny heat cloud effect it puts on the target as it strikes.

seems to work for me but have not 'measured' it since 2.3.10, maybe it was nerfed. will do.

i use it on a single huge (long range) beam, though. make sure you are hitting with all beams or they may be cancelling out each other.

 

[Insane4un]

I've put three C2 Beam Lasers on my Fer-de-Lance. All three are G5 Efficient. Two have Thermal Vent, one has Regeneration (for healing wing mates).

I'm not noticing any heat level differences in combat vs. when I had G5 Efficient beams without Thermal Vent. Further, when I fire my SCB, my temperature spikes higher if I'm firing the beams than if I'm not and it cools down MUCH slower.

Does Thermal Vent work? If so, by how much? Right now the only thing it has going for it, in my eyes, is the funny heat cloud effect it puts on the target as it strikes.

Thermal vent only cooling weapon to 0 thermal load. Not a ship. Only a weapon itself. That mean if beam thermal load is 10 TL/s, than with a Thermal vent upgrade it will be 20 TL/s. But if you manage to fix this beam on your target for some amount of time, actual TL/s from a wepon will be 0 TL/s. Basicly this effect allow you to compensate huge TL/s if you can hit target well.

If you have efficient upgrade - this effect is useless. Where i can see it can work is a OC turrets beams at best.

Again, it is NOT cooling the ship. No way. Only beams TL/s.

 

[Morbad]

If you have efficient upgrade - this effect is useless.

Even efficient beams have significant thermal load (especially the larger ones) and having zero net thermal load from them can be quite helpful if you are borderline on hear, or if you are fighting someone with effects that dump thermal load on to you...being able to return fire without dumping even more heat into your ship is pretty handy.

It's not a great effect in absolute terms, but since there really isn't anything else to put on beam lasers that doesn't have considerable downsides, most of my beams (even the efficient ones) have thermal vent on them.

 

[PhanttoM]

Thermal vent only cooling weapon to 0 thermal load. Not a ship. Only a weapon itself. That mean if beam thermal load is 10 TL/s, than with a Thermal vent upgrade it will be 20 TL/s. But if you manage to fix this beam on your target for some amount of time, actual TL/s from a wepon will be 0 TL/s. Basicly this effect allow you to compensate huge TL/s if you can hit target well.

If you have efficient upgrade - this effect is useless. Where i can see it can work is a OC turrets beams at best.

Again, it is NOT cooling the ship. No way. Only beams TL/s.

It used to provide cooling so that ships could reach 0% heat;
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/335733-The-power-of-thermal-vent?highlight=thermal+vent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpeHMR0h3Zs

So yeah, it has been nerfed a couple of times.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

Even efficient beams have significant thermal load (especially the larger ones) and having zero net thermal load from them can be quite helpful if you are borderline on hear, or if you are fighting someone with effects that dump thermal load on to you...being able to return fire without dumping even more heat into your ship is pretty handy.

It's not a great effect in absolute terms, but since there really isn't anything else to put on beam lasers that doesn't have considerable downsides, most of my beams (even the efficient ones) have thermal vent on them.

Agreed, i rolled my Vettes huge beams this morning and went for G5 efficient with thermal vent on both of them.

 

[Stigbob]

There's a really easy test you can perform to see exactly what effect they have on heat since they only vent when hitting something.

 

[Daniel Cloudsifter]

Thanks to everyone who replied.

If Thermal Vent is just reducing the heat generated by the beams with that mod to zero while they hit, it's not really all that effective for me - especially since their already G5 efficient and run really cool. I'm ok with this. I just misunderstood how much heat they vented. At least the visual effect when they hit (heat clouds on enemy) is kind of neat.

Yes, this would be a good effect on Overcharged beams.

Thanks for clearing this up for me.

 

[fus roh potato]

Last time I experimented with thermal vent, I was able to cool my ship much faster with mods that generated more heat, but it's been a while since I tested it.

 

[Ted Striker]

Even efficient beams have significant thermal load (especially the larger ones) and having zero net thermal load from them can be quite helpful if you are borderline on hear, or if you are fighting someone with effects that dump thermal load on to you...being able to return fire without dumping even more heat into your ship is pretty handy.

It's not a great effect in absolute terms, but since there really isn't anything else to put on beam lasers that doesn't have considerable downsides, most of my beams (even the efficient ones) have thermal vent on them.

Won't the opposite - thermal conduit - give you a very nice DPS boost so you can melt your target faster?

 

[Morbad]

Last time I experimented with thermal vent, I was able to cool my ship much faster with mods that generated more heat, but it's been a while since I tested it.

They have nerfed it a few times, but I still slap it on all my beam lasers because it's the only effect that isn't garbage, if I don't want to be a shield medic.

It's downside only applies when missing and there is no reason to be both shooting and missing with a beam laser.

Won't the opposite - thermal conduit - give you a very nice DPS boost so you can melt your target faster?

It has a significant base damage penalty and if you are hot enough to really make it an advantage, you're probably in major trouble.

I've seen it used in a couple of niche setups, but it's a novelty effect with limited practical application.

 

[Daniel Cloudsifter]

Even efficient beams have significant thermal load (especially the larger ones) and having zero net thermal load from them can be quite helpful if you are borderline on hear, or if you are fighting someone with effects that dump thermal load on to you...being able to return fire without dumping even more heat into your ship is pretty handy.

It's not a great effect in absolute terms, but since there really isn't anything else to put on beam lasers that doesn't have considerable downsides, most of my beams (even the efficient ones) have thermal vent on them.

I retract what I said about the two (of 3) efficient beams having thermal event and it not doing much. I was wrong. When I made all 3 beams regenerative (still G5 efficient) and fired for a LONG time, I actually got heat warnings (level around 90%). Before, it NEVER went over 50%. Also, I had times when the beams themselves overheated (on 2 pips in WEP instead of 3) and took several seconds to cool down to be used again. That also never happened with thermal vent.

With this in mind, I will take the two new beams with regeneration on them and put those on my DBX and pull the "old" thermal vent ones off and put them back in the FDL. That still leaves me the one regenerative to help wingmates and two to keep the heat off!

Further, I'm going to take my Corvette with it's 2 Huge G5 efficient beams back to Broo and reroll those and put Thermal Vent on both. Yeah, it's not "super effective" but it does make a difference.

Thanks all.

 

[Shir]

Thermal vent prevents weapons from overheating. I got an Anaconda with one 4 and three 3s long range beam lasers (rest are efficient pulse turrets), all beams are gimballed with thermal vent. You can shoot forever (charged enh. distributor) and no heat problems as long as you are hitting the enemy ship. Before the thermal vent thing, the beams would overheat the ship pretty fast

 

[Daniel Cloudsifter]

Thermal vent prevents weapons from overheating. I got an Anaconda with one 4 and three 3s long range beam lasers (rest are efficient pulse turrets), all beams are gimballed with thermal vent. You can shoot forever (charged enh. distributor) and no heat problems as long as you are hitting the enemy ship. Before the thermal vent thing, the beams would overheat the ship pretty fast

Yes, I can see it makes a difference now. I even rerolled the two C4 Beam Lasers on my Corvette to still be G5 Efficient, but now with Thermal Vent. Temperature used to hover around 50% to 60% in combat - occasionally going into warning territory if I kept up a really, really long burst. Now it hovers at 37%.

I do think it's funny that once I stop firing beams, the ships temperature does go up a bit as it cools down the lasers. We're only talking a rise from 37% to 43%, but I still think it's funny. "Don't stop firing the lasers! We'll overheat!" lol

 

[Morbad]

I do think it's funny that once I stop firing beams, the ships temperature does go up a bit as it cools down the lasers. We're only talking a rise from 37% to 43%, but I still think it's funny. "Don't stop firing the lasers! We'll overheat!" lol

Well, the only way to remove heat from a vessel in a vacuum (without also ejecting mass) is to radiate it...and it shouldn't really matter whether that energy is radiated via the radiators integrated into the vessel, or via a specially adapted energy weapon.

 

[Daniel Cloudsifter]

Well, the only way to remove heat from a vessel in a vacuum (without also ejecting mass) is to radiate it...and it shouldn't really matter whether that energy is radiated via the radiators integrated into the vessel, or via a specially adapted energy weapon.

Yes, I get that. I'm not saying this a bug. This is very clearly the way it should work and I'm fine with it. I just think it's funny.